Posts Tagged ‘step families’

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” – Alexander Pope

Expectation -a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future.

In 1995 when I married the Executive, I knew that I was marrying into what would become a blended family – two step children and one of my own. It would be mine, his and eventually ours. My expectations were that the marriage would be stronger than both of our divorced parents, I was going to be the loving wife, work hard to keep a nice home and job, the step kids wouldn’t have to call me mom, but learn to call me friend (Ps 125:3-5), and that in the end we would have a Brady Bunch life. Not so much.

My expectations were squashed by apathy from the step kids, name calling and manipulation from my husband’s ex-wife, the repeated trips to the courthouse for revisions of visitation and child support, all compounded with snide remarks every other weekend tempered with hostility from my son’s father. We tried to stay involved and active in all of our kids’ lives, provide an open door place of respite for them to come to, and give them a model of how a Christian family functioned. It was a struggle as I dealt with my failings of not making the blended family model work.

This feeling was exacerbated by the failed expectation I had of my husband as well. If living with someone for the first time wasn’t hard enough, I expected him to be the knight in shining armor who always came to my rescue when the ex reared her ugly head or the kids shot off hurtful remarks. I expected him to fix all that was wrong. (In my mind, 2/3 of the problem was his.) Most times he was silent where I wanted rant and lash out. From him, crickets. I saw this as weakness, but since learned it’s not. The silence ended any ongoing dialogue because he didn’t contribute to the “conversation”. He literally took the fuel out of the fire, except of course when it came to my son. There were so many arguments in which I was refereeing or acting as my son’s attorney, as the Executive worked hard to be the father, life coach and disciplinarian my son desperately needed.